


dissecting a heart

by onceuponamirror



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, I can't help it, Pre-Canon, they're so adorable okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 08:18:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16472042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceuponamirror/pseuds/onceuponamirror
Summary: Harvey Kinkle is fourteen, and tomorrow they’re dissecting frogs.He’s never been very brave.





	dissecting a heart

 

 

> (a harvey x sabrina pre-canon drabble)

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He’s never been very brave. 

Never been good with the creaking of the old farm house on those blustery autumnal nights, never been good with the leaves that seem to rustle across the path home from school as if nipping at his heels; never been good with the cavernous mines that run deep underfoot, convinced of something he wants to keep unspoken. 

(But he’s quietly convinced of a lot of things. Sometimes he swears there’s a red glow at the corners of his eyes, a movement in the trees the moment before he turns around, or that there’s not something in the shadows, but it’s the shadows themselves, slithering across long hallways and lying in wait.) 

He’s really not brave. He knows this. Knows this because he _really_ doesn’t want to go to class tomorrow. 

However, he’s definitely not brave enough to approach his father about getting a signed exemption slip. That’d be a brusque lecture about _manning up,_  the severity of which will depend on how much alcohol is in his father’s system at the unlucky time. And he’s not willing to face that. Nor the possible fallout of getting caught forging a signature, which would be—

Well—the worse fear wins out. He’ll go to the class. 

Harvey Kinkle is fourteen, and tomorrow they’re dissecting frogs. 

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He shuffles his feet down the corridor with all the energy of a man marked for death; he’s always been a squeamish kid, even before what happened in the mines. Frankly, he’d probably get bullied about it, about being scrawny and anxious and all the things that would make a kid like him dead meat—if he didn’t have a football star of a brother who fills a doorway and gets carried around on shoulders during Homecoming. 

It makes Harvey a bit invisible, actually. He gets so left alone by Tommy’s (well-meaning) design that it often does leave him, well, alone. Sometimes he wonders who he’d be without Tommy—if he’d be forced into some social role left open for quiet kids who get mediocre grades because they’re doodling instead of taking notes. Weirdo, probably. Slacker, possibly. 

Most of the time, he doesn’t mind it. 

Most of the time.

The bell rings, which does force his footsteps a bit faster, and then he’s in the science wing before he can help it. He drops into the seat closest to the door, owning the foresight that if he is gonna chuck his lunch at the sight of a disemboweled frog, he’d rather not do it in front of twenty other kids. 

A moment later, he realizes there’s already someone in the seat next to the one he’s chosen, and he turns to see Sabrina Spellman staring determinedly at her pencil, which she seems to be keeping upright by slowly ghosting her finger along the top of the pencil’s eraser. She barely seems to be touching it at all, but it spins in methodic circles, so she must be.

She notices him watching, and the pencil clatters down. “Oh,” she says, a bit breathlessly, as if she’s been caught with her hand in a cookie jar. “Hi.” 

“Hey,” he replies, in what he hopes is a regular tone of voice and not the nervous wreck he is expecting to hear come out of him. He glances back at the door; maybe she’s saving this seat for one of her friends. “Can I sit here?”

Her eyes dart across the path of his face for a moment. Though he’s known who she is for his entire life, they haven’t spoken much—but like him, she’s always been a bit in the shadows. But if his brand is as a result of his family, so is hers. People avoid her not because she has a cool, popular brother, but because she lives on the edge of town, out by a graveyard, where her family runs a mortuary, and has a reputation for a bit of odd behavior. 

All things considered, she’s actually pretty well-adjusted for someone who purportedly lives over a morgue. He’d never sleep a wink in that old house, that’s for sure. 

Sabrina’s lips twitch. “Of course. Harvey, right?” 

He nods, and slowly starts to pull out his books and binder. He fidgets with his supplies, switching positions of his textbooks and papers a few times all while glancing up at the teacher a few times, watching as the dead frogs are slowly getting distributed table to table. 

When he looks back over, her expression has turned slightly mischievous. “You seem worried,” she says, leaning in conspiratorially. Her dark eyebrows wiggle, just once, but it makes him feel oddly more at ease. 

Harvey chuckles, if albeit somewhat nervously, and shrugs halfway to his ears. “Yeah. Honestly, this isn’t really my thing. Dead stuff. Cutting it open. All that follows. Not that—not that there’s anything wrong with that,” he hastens to add, remembering her family business with a latent and visible cringe. 

She surveys him with a smile he can’t quite describe. Amused, maybe, but a bit softer than that. _She’s pretty,_ he thinks. 

“Nice save,” she replies, smile broadening. “Well, have no fear, I can totally take the lead on our recently croaked friend, if you want.” 

As if it’s summoned by her words, the frog in its tray clatters down between them, and then the teacher is swishing away, back towards their desk. Harvey stares at it with what he knows is mild terror, the pins already in its body, as if ready and willing to be splayed open. 

He gulps, and then feels a hand over his. “Don’t worry, I got this,” she says, and then pats the top of his hand confidently. And then picks up her little scalpel knife, and drives it straight into the frog’s chest. 

Harvey knows he should be horrified by the completely blasé ease of which she guts the frog, but as he watches her work, he feels—well, not comforted, but—he feels impressed, really. She’s practically whistling as she works, occasionally pointing things out to him but always following it with, “But you don’t have to look. Just write that down,” and grinning at him when he flashes her a look of utmost relief.

At one point, he even feels bold enough to make a quiet moaning sound effect as she removes the heart, as if from the perspective of the frog. She giggles.

It’s funny; he’d been dreading this class all month, but now it’s completely flown by. And by the time they’re cleaning up and disposing of the frog, he feels something click in his chest. Like a clock that had just righted itself. 

"Thanks again, Sabrina,” he says, as they’re both pulling their bags onto their shoulders. “You were a lifesaver. I really didn’t wanna do any of that today.” 

“Wouldn’t really call me a _lifesaver_ ,” she says, a bit wryly. “If anything, I made it harder for the frog to reanimate.” 

It’s an odd joke, but he grins at it anyway. “Well, you were really brave,” he mumbles, feeling his ears burn a bit. “I could never do that stuff. I would just be thinking about how bad I felt for the frog the whole time if it was me who had to do it.” 

She blinks at him almost like he’s a sitting atop a cabinet of curiosities. As if _he’s_ the weird one, even though she just disemboweled a dead frog without batting an eyelash. _It’s probably for being too sensitive,_ he thinks a second later. _Probably for being such a chickenshit._ He wonders if she’s gonna tell him to man up too. 

Instead, she smiles that strange smile of hers again and says, “No, that’s really sweet.” 

The bell rings, and she’s adjusting the red strap of her bag over her shoulder, and he hears himself saying, “Hey, what’s your next class?” 

“History with Wardwell,” Sabrina replies on an exhale. 

"I’m going that way. I have English,” he says, and then, before he can lose his nerve, “Wanna walk together?”

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**Author's Note:**

> rewatching the earlier eps of sabrina tonight, i was reminded of how sweet and adorable harvey x sabrina are. but tbh i felt like the show was lacking some good backstory into their relationship and what they are drawn to in one another, so i decided to fill in some blanks. and also write something short and cute, which i don't often do. 
> 
> let me know what you thought!


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